Toomey: Dems had reason to fail

Deficit supercommittee member Sen. Pat Toomey charged Monday that Democrats had incentives to steer the supercommittee toward failure to boost President Barack Obama’s re-election bid, saying a deal would hurt the president’s campaign against Congress.

“I will acknowledge that I think there was an asymmetry in the incentives,” said Toomey (R-Pa.) on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “I think there was something to [the idea that Republicans would be blamed for supercommittee failure]. The president’s fundamental campaign message is to run against Congress, never mind the fact that half the congress is controlled by the Democrats. But that’s his purpose, and certainly an agreement in this committee would have stepped on that narrative for the president.”

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Toomey argued that Republicans had no such disincentives for a deal, and recognized the peril the country would be in if the talks collapsed.

“I can tell you, every single day in the Republican conference when we get together, there is some level of discussion about it. There is an awareness that we are screaming towards a fiscal cliff, a full blown crisis, completely predictable,” the Pennsylvania senator said.

However, Toomey did compliment certain unnamed Democratic members of the supercommittee, whom he deemed as having the right motives.

“I still think there are some individual members of the committee on the Democratic side who would very much – at some level – like to have had an accomplishment here [for] their own personal satisfaction at having done something important,” said Toomey.

But although he was not entirely cynical about the intentions of all of his Democratic supercommittee colleagues, Toomey was pessimistic about the prospects of tax reform over the next two years.

“I’m not optimistic about that. You know, it’s really hard to do tax reform because of the vested interest in the various pieces and the current code,” said Toomey. “My theory has long been if we can’t do it in a committee system like we just had, where we had exceptional procedural advantages, we need a presidential campaign for which this is the centerpiece.”